She doesn’t flinch. It’s as if she doesn’t feel a thing.
Jade’s head turns in the direction of the rattling sound.
“Thank fuck,” she rasps when a set of sallow, foggy headlights wrap around the corner.
She sticks her bloody thumb in the air, signaling a ride, then flicks her dark straight locks over her bony shoulders.
“Ever hitchhiked before?” she asks with a wiggle of her sharp, thick eyebrows.
“You know I haven’t,” I laugh, pulling my phone out of the back pocket of my denim shorts, finding that I still have no cell bars. I had lost them long before the party had started.
Jade’s chin is resting on her bare shoulder, her smile joining mine. It’s so bright and beautiful and her crooked canine tooth peeks over her thin bottom lip like it always has. She has the same mischievous glint in her blue eyes that I have come to know and love over the years.
“Glad we get to be reckless together, bestie,” she whispers, chewing on her bottom lip.
The gray sedan slows, the sound of tires crunching over rock nears closer, then it’s rolling up beside us, the buzz of a window following.
And I wonder if I should feel something. Perhaps fear, uncertainty, but when my vision blurs, the trees swirling around me, reminding me how inebriated I am, I feel nothing but a wash of relief.
Jade’s bleeding hand latches onto the handle of the back door, hauling it open. Her bony fingers curl around my wrist, dragging me into the back seat. She slides across the leather, reaching forward to tap the random guy behind the wheel on the shoulder.
“Please, just don’t kill us tonight,” she slurs before falling into the seat with a sigh.
She is shit-faced, and so am I, and when she closes her eyes, checks out for the night, I know it’s on me to get us home safely tonight.
I slam the door behind me.
The driver clears his throat and adjusts the rearview mirror until the white sclera of his eyes touch mine.
And an icy shiver races through me.
They weren’t hard or soft. They didn’t tell a story. They were just ordinary.
A black ski mask covers his face, and I work to convince myself that he’s been to, and left, the same party we had. That the uncomfortable tilt of my stomach meansnothing.
He watches me for a moment and with a click of his tongue, followed by a sinuous crack of his neck, he asks, “Where are we headed?”
And on a croak, I tell him, “The trailer park in Devil’s Peak.”
I shoulder the belt behind me, pull it across my torso, battling blindly with the opening of a buckle I couldn’t seem to place.
He nods, then reaches toward the stereo.
“Solway Firth” by Slipknot pushes through the speakers and he raises the volume, making it impossible for me to hear my own thoughts.
I choose not to fight against it, giving the eerie tempo permission to lull me instead. Sinking into the sticky leather seat, my skull reclining against the headrest. I level my gaze to my side, seeing that Jade has passed out soundly against me.
I chuckle beneath my breath when her mouth pops open. Smoothing my hand through the top strands of her dark hair, I twirl the ribbon Nan had made for us both, around my finger when I feel my eyelids soften too, teasing me with sleep, only I do my best to blink the pillowing away, rubbing at the thin piece of skin.
Jade was out, and I had to make sure this guy didn’tputus out.
The thought was morbid, I know. But that was the way of being a girl.
The sharp scent of mint drifts beneath my nose and I watch the guy behind the wheel drive with his knees when he opens a pack of breath strips, slipping the dissolvable piece of paper-like freshness onto his tongue.
The song continues, the lyrics dark and harrowing and I find myself asking, “Can we put something a little less…invasive on?”
Silence stretches.
